Religion Dispatches
…nt has quiet support among Saudi royalty. Manal Al-Sharif, the 32-year-old computer consultant who spent 10 days in jail in May after publishing a YouTube video of herself at the wheel filmed by Saudi feminist Wajida Al-Huwaider, did not drive. Nor was she able to talk to the media about driving. But her Twitter account (@manal-alsharif) was busy today with brief replies to supporters of the campaign. The Women2Drive campaign resumes the push for…
Read More
…l those crowds. So he bought it. 7) His religious upbringing failed him in coming to terms with how a boy becomes a man, how sex can be beautiful, how naughty can be nice, as long it is not truly naughty. I remember my son begging me to give him a quick “sex ed” course. I told him it had to be mutual, it had to be fun, and nobody gets hurt. He wrote the rules down on his wall in a thirteen year’s old handwriting. One, two, three. Do any of these r…
Read More
…too, are people who love and live like everybody else. Exactly. Because I completely understood, I guess, the premise of what they believed in. I understood their talking points, I understood their case, but I chose not to accept it because I didn’t see how it was a real issue that was directly affecting real people, and real families, and real lives. And when I went on the summer tour, and I was able to see these people face-to-face, I came to r…
Read More
…its own the violence of the barbarous acts that were committed.” This incident marks the latest, and perhaps most spectacular, in a line of attacks on the image. Piss Christ, as the photo is commonly referred to, was among the first shots fired (or first casualties suffered, depending on your perspective) in the culture wars of Reagan-era America. In 1989, Republican senator Jesse Helms denounced the photo, characterizing Serrano as “not an artis…
Read More
…ote people who believe in God and yet denounce him. To be an atheist is to deny God’s existence, not to become enraged about God’s acts (or lack thereof). Sure, atheists have been known to condemn God, but they do this in the same spirit as one would condemn a fictional character—say, hapless Othello or the Grinch who stole Christmas. There is absolutely nothing unusual about people expressing disgust and dislike of fictional characters, and that…
Read More
…d by Ecuador’s constitution for this remarkable document, which I have put online as recent evidence of the emergence of a civil earth religion that is gaining traction globally.) The remarkable language in the Ecuadorian constitution and in Boliva’s new Mother Earth law did not, however, result from indigenous Andean spirituality alone. They were also influenced by a generation of thinking and debate around the world about human responsibilities…
Read More…erstanding of American History without an understanding of the ideas which undergirded its founding and growth. In “Why History Matters,” for example, Barton says, “if you do not see the divine hand working behind the scenes with what’s going on in history, history will be an incomprehensible enigma.” He then describes contemporary secular history as an intentional effort by the likes of Robert Ingersoll (no known relation), the American Liberal U…
Read More
…sual over our other evolved senses. The thrill of watching may mingle with compassion for those being harmed, but unless you as a viewer do something to actually alleviate that suffering, you are only a voyeuristic addict, entranced by the power of the gaze. At the end of his sermon, so brimming with fervor, Jonathan Edwards exhorted his congregation, who were no doubt squirming on the hard pews of this New England chapel: “Therefore, let every on…
Read More
…sightings of these Apocalyptic AI authors and their religious ideas have become commonplace in the popular press. In particular, faith in what is called the “Singularity”—the moment when robots become transcendently intelligent and we, as a consequence, upload our minds into machines—finds a home in the news, in science fiction, in film festivals, and in prime time television shows. Even the IEEE Spectrum, the flagship publication for the eminentl…
Read More
…d image fusing the cranial dome with the vault of the heavens. There’s an identifiable meter underlying it—dactylic—but the poem’s rhythm also summons one-pointed concentration upon the complexity of breath in tandem with devotion to the unknowable. Reading this, I wonder: do I still have a top to my head? Words as Stepping Stones Readers may not be familiar with ancient yogic teachings of primal energy (kundalini), pictured as a serpent or goddes…
Read More